


Liminal Spaces

by thenonsenseprophet (ProfessionalCouchPotato)



Series: Ahsoka Displaced [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Episode: s04e13 A World Between Worlds, Gen, Light Angst, mentions of canon character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29466924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessionalCouchPotato/pseuds/thenonsenseprophet
Summary: Some places are not meant to be inhabited.(When Ahsoka is saved by Ezra Bridger, she chooses another path.)
Relationships: Ezra Bridger & Ahsoka Tano
Series: Ahsoka Displaced [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2164395
Kudos: 16





	Liminal Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> I am heavily leaning on dialogue from the rebels episode "A World Between Worlds", and I do not own it, nor am I profiting from this fic in any way. After this point, I will be messing around in the Star Wars sandbox, but the dialogue will be original.

Perhaps Ahsoka is still in shock, but it feels to her almost as if a warm wind blows through the void. Ezra’s face swims across her vision as he helps her to her feet. 

“You’re okay,” he breathes, half in reassurance, and half, she thinks, in wonder. “Uh, but don’t look down,” he adds hastily.

Ahsoka looks down - and then resolutely turns back to the door, so as not to pass out as unknown stars twinkle madly up at her. 

The miasma of hurt that followed her old master still seems to hang in the air, thick enough to cut with her lightsaber, and Ahsoka desperately does not think of the lone golden eye, charred lidless, that had peered at her so balefully from within the cracked helmet. 

By her side, Ezra is lost in his own thoughts. His hand is still curled around her right vambrace, and Ahsoka isn’t quite sure if he’s trying to support her or himself. 

_ So young, _ she thinks fondly, and decides that yes, she is still in shock. 

“I saved you,” Ezra says. Something in his tone sets alarms ringing in Ahsoka’s mind.

“You can’t,” she says sharply, and his mouth drops open.

“I- what? I didn’t even say anything!”

Ahsoka’s lips press into a thin line. She is the wrong person for Ezra to hear this from, and she knows it, but it must be said. 

“Whoever it is you’ve lost, whoever you’re thinking of rescuing, you can’t.”

A muscle in Ezra’s jaw works for a moment. “It’s Kanan,” he whispers, at last.

Ahsoka shakes her head, even as her heart breaks a little bit more, for yet another casualty of this war. She takes her grief - for yet another light taken from the galaxy, another man from his family, another  _ friend _ \- and tucks it away to haunt her meditation later. 

“I’m sorry,” is all she says. 

Ezra looks from her to the door, and then back again. “Why can't I?” he asks, with more than a bit of familiar defiance in his face. “If I can save you, why can’t I save Kanan?” His voice breaks, and then softens. “Why can’t I save my parents?”

Instead of answering, Ahsoka closes her eyes and listens to the hum of the Force around them. It plucks a quiet chord, and her feet turn down the path. Ezra’s hand falls away from her arm, but he follows quietly; when she turns to catch his eyes, she sees defeat writ large in the slump of his shoulders. 

“What happened?” Ahsoka asks. Their feet have left a substantial trail of flickering ripples by the time Ezra answers, and his voice is halting and raw. Ahsoka wonders how long ago Kanan had joined the Force, but does not ask. Nor does she turn to look at Ezra again, as the whole misadventure unfolds in his words.

“Your master found the moment when he was needed most,” she says when he finishes, and pauses just long enough for him to draw even with her on the path. “He did what he had to do.” 

Ezra’s head remains bowed. He doesn’t contradict her.

“He did it for all of you.”

Ezra shakes his head, but raises his eyes to meet hers. There is a horrible weight of understanding resting there, one she half understands and half wishes she didn’t understand. Perhaps the galaxy would have been a brighter place if the Anakin she once knew had… had something. Had wished for less, loved less…  _ something _ . 

Perhaps not. It was all speculation, anyways. 

A warm breeze brushed across her lekku.

“Sometimes I wish things were different,” Ezra sighs. “I wish I could see my mom and dad.” 

_ And Kanan,  _ hangs in the air, unspoken but no secret to either of them.

“Why can’t things be the way they were?” 

In the distance, there is a sound like splintering sheet ice, and both of them glance around warily before hastening their steps. 

“You opened the door to this world,” Ahsoka surmises as the ripples cast by their footsteps widen and grow more erratic. “Do you know how to close it?”

“Sabine will.” Ezra’s eyes dart from door to door as they weave along the paths. The Force sings true, encouraging their footsteps, but there is an element of tension that was previously absent. “We’ll do it together.”

Ahsoka nods, but the cracking noise sounds again, this time undeniably closer, and their pace quickens into a flat out sprint. 

They round a sharp corner and Ezra sounds slightly hysterical as he says, “It’ll be so good to have you back,” but before Ahsoka can reply, the door they had just passed begins to glow, and a familiar, corpse-like sneer resolves itself from the empty blackness. 

“No,” Ahsoka breathes.

“Yes!” the Emperor cackles, and blue flames leap forth through the doorway with a flick of his emaciated hand.

_ “Run!”  _

And run they do, until the path beneath their feet seems to melt beneath the heat of the sithly fire, and Ezra’s ankle sinks too far. He goes down with a shout, and Ahsoka is already whirling around with both ‘sabers drawn when a lash of flame darts out and begins dragging Ezra away, towards the hunched form of the Emperor.

Ahsoka’s shoto flashes out, and the Sith is the one to cry out as the flames recoil from the blade. It buys precious seconds, but only that. They are forced to careen onto diverging paths as a gout of the blue fire curls viciously across where they had both been scant moments ago. 

_ “Keep going,” _ Ahsoka yells.  _ “You can make it!” _ This, she knew with perfect clarity - just as she knew that the path she was on curved in many directions, none of which were exits. 

Ezra seems not to have drawn the same conclusions.  _ “When you get out, come and find me!”  _

_ “I will, I promise!”  _ Then, between the heaving of her lungs, she adds,  _ “Eventually.” _

Ezra leaps through a door, which flashes to admit him, and the Sith fire slams into it not a heartbeat later - meeting cold resistance. Sidious howls, and Ahsoka gasps as the flames flare, then retreat at twice the speed they had advanced. The door they originated from flickers back to lifelessness, and the only sound is Ahsoka’s own pounding heart, reverberating from her chest to the tips of her montrals.

Closing her eyes, she deliberately slows her pulse. As the thunderous noise retreats, a softer one replaces it - something almost like the rustle of wind in the tops of trees. 

Ahsoka’s feet carry her down an unfamiliar path, and the stars that shine in the darkness are stranger than ever before.


End file.
